Surprisingly easy — I expected tougher questions, but the coding round felt more like a warm-up. The main challenge was a DSA problem about counting islands in a 2D grid, which led to a discussion on DFS versus BFS and handling large grids. Funny enough, I had revisited that exact type of question while prepping on PracHub, which made me feel more confident. The interview wrapped up with a behavioral round, and I accepted an offer, but ultimately decided to decline it for another opportunity. Overall, it was a smooth experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Number of Islands — given a 2D grid of '1's (land) and '0's (water), count the number of connected islands. Walk through DFS vs BFS, and discuss how to avoid revisiting cells (in-place mutation vs visited set) and what changes if the grid is huge and must stream from disk.
I applied online. The process took 7 weeks. I interviewed at Amazon (Culver City, CA) in Sep 2024
Interview
Applied online. A couple weeks later, I get an email to do an OA. OA was half coding challenge (Leetcode style) and half work style assessment. A couple weeks later, I received an email to provide availability for a final round of interviews the following week. The final round was 3 1 hour interviews with some SDE II's. Mostly behavioral and OOP design questions and one Leetcode style challenge. Got my offer letter 4 days later.
All of the interviewers were super nice and seemed excited to be there. Don't get too nervous, just be yourself and keep the conversation going.
Prep: For the Coding sections, if you know OOP principles and you can do the Leetcode blind 75, you're good. Write down a bunch of events from past employment, school, etc. to use for the behavioral questions.
It started with an OA, and then after a few weeks, I got invited to four rounds of interviews: technical and behavioral at 3 of the 4, and behavioral only at one.
I applied online. I interviewed at Amazon (Calgary, AB) in Jun 2026
Interview
Online Assessment is the first step in the process. I didn’t have an HR phone screening and went straight to the OA after applying. It was sent to me about a week after I submitted my application.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first question is LeetCode style algorithms question, and the second question gives a full stack repo (choice of Java, NodeJS, or Django) and asks to solve a backend issue which is causing a bug in the frontend. Unit tests must pass to pass the second question. You can run both backend/frontend indivdually or together